CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

86 Syndromes of Corruption
Influence market corruption: more than meets the eye
Political contributions and influence processes are not inherently corrupt,
but they pose major questions about relationships between wealth and
power in democracies. Most Influence Market societies have reached
legal and political accommodations that check the worst excesses while
not greatly restraining political and economic elites; still, many citizens of
those societies regard ‘‘money politics’’ as a broadly corrupting influence.
Clearly, established democracies have not solved the corruption problem
despite often depicting their own systems as standards of reform. A more
accurate statement would be that they have a syndrome of their own that
is more threatening to the values and vitality of politics than to economic
development, one likely to attract less attention from organizations and
interests accustomed to thinking about the costs of corruption primarily
in economic terms. It is still a syndrome that is worth considerable
concern.
The scope of Influence Market corruption is difficult to specify. Corrupt
contributions and influence can be difficult to distinguish from legitimate
varieties; costs are long-term, widely distributed, and take the form of
reduced vitality of electoral politics and quality of public policy, rather
than damage done by a few specific deals. Wealth interests may have
so much political clout that more extensive corruption is unnecessary;
alternatively, they and their political clients may have become adept at
covering their tracks or at putting an acceptable public face on activities.
If either (or both) are true, Influence Market democracies will have
legitimated, privatized, or decentralized connections between wealth and
power that in other societies take on clearly corrupt forms. That point is
relevant not only to the relatively favorable corruption scores most
Influence Market countries receive, but also to the longer-term implications
of viewing economic liberalization as an anti-corruption strategy.
Possible economic effects are also hard to judge. We will never know
whether these three economies might have grown faster, or in more equitable
or desirable ways, without Influence Market corruption. Germany
and Japan are finding it difficult to adapt to the new world economy, a
problem that might be traceable in part to the role of Influence Markets in
preempting political competition and change. Further, we should not
forget corruption involved in the international dealings of corporations
that call market democracies home. Such cases will emerge, in chapters
to come, as problems in less-developed countries.
Influence Market cases share many attributes, but they are far from
identical. Economic and political participation factors specific to these
countries introduce variations; so do institutions, including not just